Dispute

07/24/2015

The story goes that two women who both claimed to be the mother of a baby asked King Solomon to resolve the dispute. The King ordered that the baby be cut in half and by doing so could determine who the real mother was by watching the women's reactions. An unusual inheritance case in Turkey had village elders suggesting that a home be cut in half, not to see who should receive but to leave it that way.

Brothers Ali and Ahmet Kangel inherited a home in a remote Turkish village from their father. They decided to demolish the house and renovate it. However, they could not reach an agreement about living arrangements in the proposed new home so they sought the wisdom of the village elders to determine what to do.

The final result was that a chainsaw was used to cut the house in half and each brother got half of it. One of the brothers renovated his half; the other has not done so. The result is a house the looks dilapidated on one side and modern on the other. Daily Sabah reported this story in "Brothers cut house in half over inheritance dispute."

It is not unusual for siblings to have disputes over an inheritance. It is also not unusual for the best solution to resolve the dispute is to cut it in half. However, it is an unusual solution when the dispute involves a house. Perhaps, this case will turn out just like King Solomon and the baby. It might turn out that the unusual decision was the wisest.